


Cave In

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Kahlia Mahariel [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Deep Roads, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 01:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9468560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: In a split second, Kahlia is gone, buried beneath rubble by a darkspawn's explosives. Before this moment, Leliana didn't trust Zevran or his intentions toward Kahlia. But seeing his grief over her loss might just change her mind about him.





	

Leliana saw the rocks fall in the Deep Roads after the genlock set off the explosives. She felt the ground rumble and the tunnels shake. The genlock had died in the blast, had expected to. She’d seen the horrible grin it had leveled at Kahlia just before lighting the fuse. Kahlia hadn’t seen the spark, had darted forward to kill it. Her blade sank into its neck a mere moment before the barrel exploded.

“Kahlia!” she yelled as rubble separated her from the Warden. The tremors threw off her balance and she fell to the floor, desperately trying to shield her head from falling rocks. Beside her, Morrigan grunted with effort and erected a magical barrier over herself, Leliana, and Zevran.

It was over quickly. Dust slowly settled, and Leliana coughed as she breathed it in. Morrigan slumped over, downing a phial of lyrium. Zevran remained kneeling beside Leliana for a moment, then surged forward, towards the rubble that blocked off the tunnel.

“Kahlia!” he yelled, desperately clawing at the rocks and dirt. “Kahlia, can you hear me?” He was trying to dig through it with his bare hands.

“It is no use, elf,” Morrigan huffed at him, trying to catch her breath. The dust was sticking to her sweat-slicked skin in streaks, her hair had half fallen out of its usual careful style, and her clothing had more rips than she’d ever seen. Leliana doubted she looked much better. Zevran’s golden hair was turned brown by debris and he was flecked with darkspawn blood that had eaten into the leather of his armor. “She was right next to the barrel when it exploded.”

“Kahlia!” Zevran called again, as if he hadn’t heard Morrigan speak. As he scrabbled at the rock, Leliana rose and put a hand on his shoulder. He shook her off and kept digging. “Kahlia, can you hear me?”

“Zevran, stop!” Leliana said, resting her hands on his shoulders. He tried to shrug away from her but she kept her hold. “Zevran, she’s gone.”

“No,” he said harshly, shaking his head vigorously. When he looked at her, his eyes were wild, frantic. His hands were bleeding from the sharp rocks, but he turned away from her and tried to dig again. Leliana caught his wrists to stop him.

“Zevran! There’s nothing you can do! Stop, please! You’re hurting yourself,” she implored. When he looked at her again, his eyes were no less frantic, but the tracks of tears were slowly cleaning his cheeks of dirt.

“No,” he said again, but it sounded more like he was begging. Leliana took a deep breath.

“She was right next to the barrel,” Leliana reminded him. “I don’t want it to be true, either, but I know what I saw.”

He shook his head again. “The genlock was between her and it,” he argued, his voice rasping. Leliana wasn’t sure if it was the debris or his tears she heard. “Its body could have saved her.”

“And the rocks?” Morrigan asked, standing. She approached with a prowl, something predatory in her gait. “The entire tunnel is sealed! How could she not have been crushed?”

“I know Kahlia,” Zevran said, shaking his head again. “She could have gotten out of the way. She is so quick.”

“Wishful thinking,” Morrigan snapped, but her eyes glinted wetly. Leliana knew that Kahlia had earned Morrigan’s friendship, though the prickly witch might never earn her own. She was covering her grief with anger.

“It is not!” Zevran snapped back. “I have been teaching her the ways of the assassin, and she is faster than I ever was! She could have gotten out of the way!”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Leliana said, trying to think past her own grief for her friend. “We are trapped here.” She gestured to the new cave in. “That was our way out, the only one we knew of.”

“Then dig,” Zevran pleaded. Leliana shook her head.

“We would need Shale to get past all that, if it could even be done,” she argued.

“Then do you suggest we sit here and die?” he asked angrily. “You said it yourself; this is our only way out! What choice do we have but to dig?”

“We have magic,” Morrigan said softly. “I could blast our way through.”

“Wouldn’t that weaken the tunnel even further?” Leliana asked. “We might risk another cave in!”

“Better to die from falling rocks than be taken by the darkspawn,” Morrigan murmured with a finality that shocked Leliana. The witch shook her head after a moment, eyeing the rocks and rubble that blocked their path. “I need to rest before I can attempt it,” she said impassively. With that, she turned away from them and settled herself against the wall of the tunnel and closed her eyes. Leliana turned to look at Zevran.

The assassin’s head was bowed as he placed a bleeding hand on the rock he’d been frantically trying to move. Tears flowed freely down his face to splash on the dirt he knelt on. His lips moved, but Leliana could catch only snippets of what he was saying.

“Kahlia, mi amor… don’t be dead… waited too long… promised… I can’t… I couldn’t… Please.” His words dissolved into sobs that wracked his entire body, and Leliana realized she’d been wrong about him.

In the beginning, when Kahlia spared him and accepted his offer to fight for her, Leliana had watched him carefully, convinced he was simply awaiting another opportunity to complete the contract on her life. He had watched her watching him and done nothing about it, which only set her nerves tingling even more. She had watched as Zevran and Kahlia had gone into Kahlia’s tent together for the first time, had heard the noises they’d made for hours into the night, nearly until dawn, and had been terrified for her friend. She’d been convinced that Zevran was up to something. By that point, she’d finally accepted that he didn’t want to complete his contract, but she’d been certain he was only using them somehow, using Kahlia. When she’d carefully asked Kahlia about it once, the elf had replied, “Of course he is,” as if it were obvious and of no concern. “He wants to be free of the Crows, and we can do that for him. In exchange, he helps keep us all safe and fight the Blight. It’s a fair trade, really. Don’t be so worried, Leli. What he wants is all out in the open.”

In her bitterness at having her concerns dismissed, she’d retorted, “Including you?” In response, Kahlia had only blushed.

But to see Zevran like this, whispering desperate pleas and prayers to the stone that had buried his lover, Leliana no longer doubted him. Whatever else was true, he cared about Kahlia. He wasn’t using her for a good time. He wasn’t using sex to get her to lower her guard. He cared. He fought for her because he cared. Whoever he had been when they met, that person was nearly dead. The assassin from the House of Crows who cared only for blood and physical pleasure wasn’t really Zevran. This was Zevran, mourning, hoping, begging for his lover to come back to him.

Leliana understood that there was nothing she could do for him. All she could do was wait for Morrigan to be ready to try to move the rocks blocking their path. So she left him to his tears and his dirt and sat against the wall opposite Morrigan and tried very hard not to think.

She failed.

Kahlia had been so kind from the very beginning. When they’d met, she’d smiled kindly and asked that Leliana stay back to keep from getting hurt as she dealt with Loghain’s men. When the fight was over and the captain had fled with his only remaining man, Kahlia had complimented her fighting style.

In response to Leliana’s slightly insane-sounding request to join her, she had smiled and agreed, saying that an extra blade would be welcome. In the weeks that followed, Kahlia had personally seen to Leliana’s comfort among her little ragtag group of people. When they’d stood watch together in the night, Kahlia had listened, enraptured, to Leliana’s tales or whatever else she wanted to talk about. Kahlia spoke very little, but said much with few words. Leliana hadn’t had friends in a very long time, but she was proud to call Kahlia her friend.

“I am ready to begin,” Morrigan said suddenly, standing. “Back away, elf, or you will be hit by my spell the same as the rocks.” Zevran stood and backed away silently.

Between her hands, Morrigan gathered power that felt like emptiness, a distinct lack of anything. She let it build until Leliana thought her ears would pop, then threw it at the cave in. The resulting explosion knocked them all to the ground, where they curled up and tried to protect their heads.

When the dust finally cleared, Leliana’s ears were ringing. She looked at the cave in and almost groaned. There had been no real effect. Whatever rubble had been cleared had been replaced by more.

Morrigan scoffed and kicked a rock forcefully.

“What are you doing? You’ll bring down the whole tunnel!” a frantic voice called from behind them. Leliana stiffened, then turned. Running towards them, bloodied blades clutched in her hands, was Kahlia.

“Mi amor!” Zevran cried, and sprinted for her. She opened her arms for him, and he would have knocked her off her feet with the force of his body if he hadn’t swept her up into the air. Her daggers fell to the ground as she wrapped her arms around him. Leliana was frozen in shock, Morrigan in a similar state. Zevran was babbling incoherently into Kahlia’s shoulder as he held her tightly.

“Shh, vhenan, I am here,” she crooned to him. “I dove out of the way of the rocks. I’m not hurt. I found a way around to come to you. There’s another way out of here.”

After a few more minutes, during which Kahlia tried to soothe Zevran as she held him as tightly as he held her, he finally pulled back enough to look at her. He sniffled and ran gentle hands across her face and down her shoulders and arms.

“You are certain you’re not hurt?” he asked frantically, feeling for injuries.

“I am fine, Zev. Shh, I’m just fine,” she replied gently, smiling softly at her lover.

“We were certain you had been crushed,” Morrigan said softly, breaking out of her frozen shock to approach. Kahlia stepped out of Zevran’s embrace long enough to give the witch a quick, tight hug that Morrigan returned forcefully, to Leliana’s surprise. Then she stepped back into the circle of Zevran’s arms and smiled at Leliana.

“Come on, Leli, it’s this way,” she said, jerking her head back the way she’d come. Leliana came forward and hugged her friend tightly.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” she whispered. Kahlia just tightened her hold.

As Kahlia turned to lead the way to the side path she’d found, Zevran pressed a kiss to her sweat-soaked red hair and kept his arm wrapped firmly around her shoulders. Leliana had a feeling that Kahlia wouldn’t be without his touch for days yet.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing as she had thought before.


End file.
